Paradise Burning (5 page)

Peter, who’d once been hers. And she hadn’t
been woman enough to hold on. Hadn’t loved enough to come down on
the right side of divided loyalties.

Obviously, his temper hadn’t abated. He
looked ready to eat her alive. Standing on the first step, towering
above her, he was casting off glints of rage like a sparkler on the
Fourth of July. “I’ve been calling AKA ten times a day to find out
if they’d heard from you. Blast it, Mouse, you can’t just leave
some silly message saying you’re fine, then disappear off the face
of the earth.”

Mandy stepped back. She’d been close enough
to smell his shaving cream, and that wasn’t good. Cool. No matter
how violent the churning inside, she had to be cool. “I checked in
every day. There was no need to worry.”

“
No need!” Peter mocked. “I expected
you three days ago. I had the house cleaned, your room ready,
groceries, the table set for two. You didn’t even call me. I waited
and I waited, pictured you mangled on the highway, mugged,
kidnapped. I had to call AKA to find out you were
delayed
. Well, let me tell you,
Mouse, I’m not a happy camper.”

“
Hello, Peter. It’s nice to see you
too.”

“
Don’t lay the guilt on me, kid. Not
this time. You’re three days late. I’ve acquired a whole slew of
gray hairs. As your employer, your
boss
, I’d like to know why.”

“
Would you mind coming down off that
step? I’m getting a crick in my neck.”
Damn
. Even on a level surface, she still had to
look up to him. This was the point where she ought to suggest they
call the whole thing off, but Peter was just angry enough he might
agree. So . . .

“
Okay,” Mandy admitted, “I was tweaking
your tail. “I was being petty, and . . . I guess you could call it
‘hiding out.’ There really were some things I had to do,” she added
hastily, “but I’m here now. If you still want me to work for you,
then let’s get at it.”

With his arms crossed over his chest, Peter
studied her, finally giving a curt nod. “Go on up. Give me your
keys, I’ll unload the car.”

Oh-oh
. Mandy
nodded to the laptop case hanging over her shoulder. “This is all I
have. I–I’m staying at Calusa Campground.”

“
Like hell you are!”

Mandy winced, stuck up her chin. “I rented an
RV. I need the independence, Peter. I mean, you know what’s going
to happen if I stay here.”

Yeah, he did
.
Wasn’t that the whole point?

And if his Mouse was developing a roar
instead of a squeak, maybe that wasn’t so bad after all. “Shall we
discuss it inside?” Peter relieved Mandy of her laptop, waved her
up the stairs, grimly satisfied that he’d managed to get the words
past his clenched teeth.

The sparks that zinged between them when he
touched her made his eyes cross and other parts of his anatomy stir
to life. Guess she was right. Living under the same roof while they
sorted out the mess they’d made of their lives hadn’t been the best
thinking he’d ever done. They’d end up in bed, where they’d never
had a problem, and the same old conflicts would remain unresolved,
hanging between them as solidly as the Great Wall of China.

Aw, hell
. This
wasn’t at all what he’d planned.

But he savored the look on Mandy’s face when
she saw his central greatroom, its white walls the perfect backdrop
for a fine collection of Florida art. Mandy’s eyes widened at the
office he’d outfitted for her, a corner room with a view of both
woods and river. Peter felt a surge of hope. So far, so good.

Postponing a full house tour—the moment
didn’t seem right for viewing bedrooms—Peter steered Mandy back to
the greatroom and waved her to a seat on a burgundy and
gray-striped sofa before sitting in a matching upholstered chair
across from her. “You really have to do this?” he asked.

“
Yes.”

“
Did you get a divorce and no one
bothered to tell me?”

“
No. Did you?”

Peter slumped back in his chair, his gaze
fixed on the coffered ceiling. “Well, ain’t we just two sorry sons
of bitches.”

“
That’s not quite the prose or accuracy
I expect from a best-selling author.”

“
As I recall, you enjoyed flaunting
that famous prose, ‘Whither thou goest.’”

“
Ouch,” Mandy murmured.

“
I begged you to come with me, Mouse,
you know I did. And now, when it’s obvious I’m trying to maneuver
another chance, you rent an RV!”

“
And what about when I went to
Manhattan all starry-eyed and gullible and found you shacked up
with some nubile fair maiden? A farewell fuck, isn’t that what you
told me?”

“
Mandy!” Peter scrubbed a hand over his
face. Silence. “O-kay,” he drawled, “so you’re not ready to share
the same roof, but an RV? In a
campground
?”

“
It’s the Season.”

“
What?”

“
The Winter Season. No rents available.
And the campground was convenient.” Morosely, Peter nodded. “And,
besides, I like the idea of being able to drive off into the wild
blue yonder if the notion strikes me.”

Peter held up his hand, palm out. “Okay,
okay, threat understood. Say no more.”

As the silence lengthened, Peter’s eyes took
on a predatory gleam. “Scared to live with me, are you?”

“
Just cautious.”

Peter leaned toward her, lips curling into a
taunting grin. “Come on, Mouse, admit it, you find me
tempting.”

“
If I’m ever that stupid,” Mandy
retorted, “all I have to do is think of that silly young thing
trying to skitter out of your apartment while hopping on one foot
and trying to get a spike-heeled shoe onto the other.”

“
Dammit, Mouse, I’ve paid for that with
two years of celibacy!”

Mandy opened her eyes wide. “Oh, poor baby.
My heart bleeds.”

“
Cut the sarcasm, Mouse. If you’d come
with me when I left AKA–-as I asked,
begged
you to—we’d probably have three kids by
now.”

Double ouch
.
Miserable underhanded wretch.

Mandy dug her toe into the thick pile of the
silver gray carpet. “So we’re both stubborn, wrong-headed idiots.
With a long way to go before we find out if compatibility is an
option. She lifted her head, looked her husband in the eye. “Shall
we get to work?”

Mandy pried her eyes open, winced at
the red numbers on her bedside alarm, and burrowed her head under
the pillow. Sleepless for half the night, and she’d waked at the
ungodly hour of six-thirty. A. M. Mandy didn’t do mornings.
She
hated
early mornings. Yet
here she was, not sleeping, in the queen-size bed that took up most
of the floorspace in her RV’s bedroom, with a dawn as cold and gray
as New England peeking around the edges of the window
drapes.

Numbers skittered through her head.
Mind-numbing numbers. Twenty-seven million victims of human
trafficking world-wide—and that estimate could be low. Eight
hundred thousand women and children trafficked across national
borders
each year
. A million
children a year brought into the sex industry. One hundred and
sixty-one countries involved. Profits, $32,000,000,000 and
counting. And those statistics didn’t include the several million
women listed under
Foreign
Brides
, the softer underbelly of the trafficking
marketplace.

“
Cull and file the most pertinent
articles off the Net,” Peter had told her. “Try the state and
university libraries––I’ve already exhausted the county system.
Newspaper archives—there was a case only ninety miles from here.
Mexican girls imported for use by migrant workers.”

“
So, basically,” Mandy declared, “you
got me down here, at AKA’s exorbitant rates, to research
sex.”

“
I’m covering all kinds of slavery,”
Peter intoned after thirty seconds of dead silence.

“
But I bet it’s sex your editor wants.
That’s what sells, right?”

“
You know, Mouse, I never thought the
day would come when you’d begin to sound like Eleanor.”

A low blow. And it hurt. Particularly when
Mandy had always preferred working Jeff’s side of AKA’s business.
Fast action, with obvious results, instant gratification.
Trafficking in human beings was as all-pervasive and elusive as the
drug trade. Shut one route down, another took its place. Whatever
customers wanted, there was someone ready to supply it. Money was
king. Anything could be bought.

Peter’s book might help—his name would count
for something—but so few people really cared. “Nasty foreigners,”
Grandmother Kingsley had sniffed to Eleanor on more than one
occasion. “Not our problem.”

If Gramma only knew. Five minutes on the Net
had produced a whole slew of articles on trafficking in the U. S.
In the twenty-first century.

Mandy shifted her pillow, tweaked aside the
obscenely bright print of the short window drapes next to her head.
Outside, the gloom was lightening to silver gray. The prelude to
another disgustingly cheerful sunny day in Florida. Mandy crawled
up onto her knees, pressed her nose to the glass. All quiet.
Evidently, the seniors at Calusa Campground weren’t much given to
mornings either.

What the heck . . . Mandy scrambled out of
bed, pulled on jeans and a tee, flung open the RV door . . . and
returned to her closet for a jacket. At this hour even Florida
showed traces of winter.

As she made her way to the dock, not a
person, dog, or cat could be seen, but the squirrel was there,
flipping his tail and racing across the branch of a live oak. And
to the right of the path, something moved. Mandy stared,
fascinated, at what appeared to be a large armored rat rooting
through the soil with its oversize snout, seemingly unconcerned by
her presence. Armadillo, that’s what it was! A slow-moving,
rat-tailed rodent protected by armored sides it might have borrowed
from a turtle.

Nature certainly had some very odd
quirks.

Gingerly, Mandy sank down on a wooden bench,
damp with morning dew, and watched the armadillo, while also making
a half-hearted effort to find the birds that were loudly
celebrating the sunrise from well-hidden perches in the surrounding
trees. Mist was rising into the cool morning air from water still
warm from the previous day’s heat. Moisture clung to every leaf and
branch. Even the Spanish moss hung heavily from the trees. It was
as if she’d entered some enchanted forest where anything could
happen. Like catching a glimpse of prehistoric times. Armadillos
were almost as far out of her spectrum as unicorns. What other
creatures might rise up out of the mist?

A flutter of huge wings. A bird with
beanstalk legs and gray-blue feathers stalked toward her across the
narrow patch of grass. It had to be a heron. Maybe, just maybe
these moments of soul-soothing tranquility were partial
compensation for working with Peter.

Besides the obvious.

Mandy stared back at the heron, who was
giving her the beady eye, undoubtedly hoping she’d just returned
from a fishing trip and was willing to share. “Sorry,” she
murmured. “No fish, no meat. I’ll try to do better tomorrow.”

Amanda Armitage of AKA talking to wildlife.
Now there was a bulletin no one would believe.

So who else could she talk to? Since
most of her problems began and ended with Peter, she couldn’t very
well talk to
him
.

There was always Ed Cramer. Mandy’s lips
curled in a thin smile. When she’d come back from Peter’s last
night, she’d ventured a guess that the north end of the campground
abutted the south end of Amber Run, where Peter lived. Was it
possible she could actually walk to work?

The elderly camp manager had done his best to
put an end to that notion. “Gotta be careful out there,” he’d said.
“You can find most anythin’. Rattlesnakes, wild boar, maybe an
alligator sunning itself. Even the ticks and spiders ain’t
friendly,” he’d added kindly, sending shivers up Mandy’s spine.
“Don’t go walkin’ on nothin’ but a road or a clear-cut path, y’hear
what I’m tellin’ you, girl?”

She heard. No walks through the woods to
Amber Run.

Mandy stared upriver, wishing the new
development was on the map so she could estimate just how far she
was from Peter’s house. Maybe one day, just to be daring, she could
row to work. She craned her neck, trying to see some sign of
Peter’s towering Key West home, but the river had as many twists
and turns as the snakes in these parts. She could see nothing but
low-lying mist and dripping greenery.

Except . . . on the far side of the river
something caught her eye. On the opposite bank that was supposed to
be uninhabited, untouched Florida wilderness.

Mandy scrambled up on the bench, shaded her
eyes against the sun, which was now just high enough to be a
nuisance. She squinted, polished her misted glasses on her T-shirt,
then balanced on tiptoe, took another look.

Perhaps a hundred yards upriver there seemed
to be a small clearing, a grassy break in the jungle. Sitting on a
fallen palm trunk was a woman with long blond hair. Mandy couldn’t
tell her age, height, or the shape of her face, but the mist-kissed
ethereal stranger seemed to be slim and supple. Odder yet, in the
midst of the Florida jungle she was wearing a dress.